No bond reduction for Westport man accused of sexual assault of psychiatric patient

Police took Mark Dipietro, 22, of Bridgeport into custody on Aug. 3, 2016 on charges of sexual assault, first and fourth, following a May call from Hall-Brooke Behavioral Health Services in Westport, Conn.

Police took Mark Dipietro, 22, of Bridgeport into custody on Aug. 3, 2016 on charges of sexual assault, first and fourth, following a May call from Hall-Brooke Behavioral Health Services in Westport, Conn.

Photo: Westport Police / Contributed Photo

Photo: Westport Police / Contributed Photo

Image
1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

Police took Mark Dipietro, 22, of Bridgeport into custody on Aug. 3, 2016 on charges of sexual assault, first and fourth, following a May call from Hall-Brooke Behavioral Health Services in Westport, Conn.

Police took Mark Dipietro, 22, of Bridgeport into custody on Aug. 3, 2016 on charges of sexual assault, first and fourth, following a May call from Hall-Brooke Behavioral Health Services in Westport, Conn.

Photo: Westport Police / Contributed Photo

No bond reduction for Westport man accused of sexual assault of psychiatric patient

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

STAMFORD — A Stamford judge on Monday refused to lower the bond of a Westport man with mental health problems who is accused of forcing a fellow patient to give him oral sex at a psychiatric hospital in 2016.

Two weeks after being found competent to stand trial on a charges of first- and fourth-degree sexual assault, Mark DiPietro’s bond amount was upheld by Judge Bruce Hudock.

DiPietro’s attorney Frank Bevilacqua asked that DiPietro’s bond be reduced from $100,000 to $50,000 and said his client would be placed in a Christian facility called Time for a Change Ministry in Bridgeport.

After the judge refused to reduce the bond, Bevilacqua seemed vexed and immediately asked Hudock to send the case to trial. But Hudock said he had no control over the trial schedule and told Bevilacqua and Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph Valdes to talk to the courthouse’s presiding judge, Gary White, about when a trial could be held. DiPietro, 24, is being held at Garner Correctional Facility in Newtown, which gives treatment to adult male offenders with significant mental health issues, and will remain there he either goes to trial or takes a plea agreement in the case.

DiPietro was arrested in August 2016 after an investigation that began several months earlier after a female patient at St. Vincent’s Behavioral Health Services Westport campus made a complaint against him.

According to his four-page arrest affidavit, Westport police were called to the psychiatric hospital when a female patient told a nurse that DiPietro had just grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her into his room, before forcibly making her give him oral sex.

The woman told police she tried to get away from DiPietro, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, but he would not let her go. The patient said DiPietro also felt her private parts through her clothing, the affidavit said.

DiPietro denied doing anything to the woman and at first claimed to police that he did not know her. But police obtained video tape showing the two sitting in a hallway of the hospital before he grabbed the woman by the wrist and pulled her into his room, the affidavit said. Several minutes later, the two can be seen on video coming out of the room, and they sit in the hallway for a few moments before the woman walks into her room, according to police.

After a moment she walked out of her room and reported the assault to the male nurse, the affidavit said.

Valdes argued against the bond reduction because he said DiPietro has a long history of being resistant to taking his medications. About nine months ago, Valdes said, DiPietro was thrown back in jail for refusing to take his medication and therefore violating his conditions of release after being released on a promise to appear.

As a result, DiPietro was a risk to himself and the community, Valdes said.

“The last time the bond was reduced to a conditional promise to appear the conditions were to go to Time for a Change and comply with taking his medications and he did neither of those and he decompensated and it took nine months to restore him to competency,” Valdes said. To be competent, state law requires a defendant to understand the charges against them and be able to assist in their own defense.

But Bevilacqua said when DiPietro was released, the doctors had not worked out the medications that he should have been taking and it took an additional 11 months to get it right.

“It took them many months of trial and error to come down with the, for lack of a better term, the proper cocktail of medications for the man standing on my right today. They did not give him the proper medications so he did not want to take it,” Bevilacqua said. “Now he is ready. He is under the proper medications by the experts who testified here in court. He has been under these medications for several weeks and there is no decompensation and he is prepared to go to the facility.”